LeeFest offers free tickets to Y Not attendees to “restore faith in festivals”

Organisers of LeeFest are offering a hundred free tickets to people who attended the recent editions of Truck and Y Not in a bid to “restore their faith in festivals”.

As previously reported, the final day of Y Not was called off last weekend after heavy rainfall caused chaos on site. There was much chatter online accusing management at the event of not being properly prepared for the bad weather conditions, and also criticising onsite security and communications, among other things.

Although the company overseeing production at Y Not denied that it hadn’t been prepared for the bad weather, that hasn’t stopped some ticket-holders complaining online about various alleged logistical issues at both Y Not and its sister festival Truck, which took place the previous weekend.

Some have also noted that both festivals were acquired last year by the acquisitive live music side of Global – via its Broadwick Live business – alleging that that has impacted on customer service.

It’s seemingly in response to that chatter that LeeFest is offering the free tickets to its 2017 event – LeeFest Presents The Neverland – which takes place from 10-12 Aug.

The festival’s founder Lee Denny said yesterday: “”We don’t want people to lose faith in festivals because a major company failed to deliver. Hopefully we can give a few people the experience they deserved at Y Not and Truck and that will restore their love of festivals!”

Also implying that the alleged issues at Y Not and Truck were possibly linked to them now being operated by a major player in live entertainment – rather than an independent promoter – Denny added: “Independent festivals are toiled over by teams for the love of the event, not just for profit. We don’t want to be tarred with the brush of the majors so hopefully this is a small contribution to combat that!”

Anyone who had a ticket for Y Not or Truck can enter the draw for free LeeFest tickets by sending the order confirmation they received from the other events to love@leefest.org by midday on Sunday, 6 Aug.

UPDATE 7 Aug 2014, 18.00: Denny has issued another statement about LeeFest’s offer to Y Not and Truck ticket holders clarifying his position, in which he states: “A little word on our Y Not / Truck ticket offer – our intentions were to make a gesture of goodwill to the nation’s festival-goers, and to create some positivity for an industry that we care immensely about following the recent negative news stories”

He adds: “We appreciate that many individuals would have worked incredibly hard, in difficult conditions, to run those events; and I know how hard that can be. Many individuals I know are still involved and I very much respect their contributions to this industry. I apologise for any offence caused to those individuals and wish the teams from Y Not and Truck the very best for the future”.